The Nature of Gas: Fuel and Economic Paradigms for Web3 Transactions

In 2024, the cross-chain wallet of Hong Kong HashKey Exchange compressed the Gas fee per transaction to $0.001 by integrating Layer 2 technology, processed compliance identity authentication more than 42,000 times, and verified the actual value of Gas optimization. This practice reveals the core role of Gas in Web3 transactions - as a unit of measurement for computing resources, Gas is not only the "fuel" of the blockchain network, but also a key element in reconstructing the decentralized economic model.

The essence of Gas: the fuel for blockchain transactions

Gas is a unit that measures the computing resources required to execute transactions on a blockchain network. For example, transferring ETH consumes 21,000 Gas, while calling a complex smart contract may consume millions of Gas. The calculation formula is: Gas fee = Gas unit price × Gas consumption. In the Ethereum network, Gas unit price is priced in Gwei (1 ETH = 10 ^ 9 Gwei), and users compete for miner packaging priority by adjusting the Gas unit price. After the cross-chain gateway of HashKey Exchange was connected to the EIP-1559 mechanism, it processed cross-border transfer transactions with an amount exceeding 600 billion HKD in 2024, and the confirmation time of a single transaction was compressed to within 5 seconds, verifying the efficiency of dynamic Gas pricing.

Gas mechanism ensures cyber security through economic incentives. Miners/validators receive Gas fee rewards by packaging transactions, and Gas consumption is linked to operational complexity to prevent malicious users from exhausting network resources through attacks such as infinite loops. For example, Solana compresses transaction confirmation time to 0.4 seconds and Gas fees as low as $0.00025 through Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT consensus mechanism, supporting the DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure) ecosystem to process over $17.90 billion in assets. After the compliance framework of HashKey Exchange is connected to the Solana network, it will process over 120TB of IoT data in 2024, reducing storage costs by 68% compared to centralized Cloud as a Service.

There are significant differences in the Gas mechanisms of different blockchains.

• Ethereum : Introducing Base Fee and Priority Fee through EIP-1559, the base fee is dynamically adjusted and destroyed with network congestion, forming a deflationary mechanism. In 2024, the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling plan will reduce gas fees by 90% and support DeFi protocols to process more than 2 million daily transactions.
• Solana : Adopting the local fee market (Localized Fee Markets), separate pricing for accounts with intense state contention, is expected to achieve million-level TPS after the Firedancer validator goes online in 2025, and the Gas fee is maintained below $0.001.
• HashKey Chain : Based on OP-Stack Rollup technology, Gas fee is only 1/10 of Ethereum. In 2024, it will carry China Taiping 100 million USD MMF tokenized publish, realizing the second-level circulation of fund shares and zero transaction fees.

II. Economic models and optimization strategies

Gas fees are directly affected by network congestion. For example, during the peak period of NFT minting on the Ethereum mainnet, the unit price of Gas can reach 500 Gwei (about $15), while it may drop to 20 Gwei (about $0.06) in the early morning. HashKey Exchange's Gas fee prediction model, combined with on-chain data and Machine Learning, will help users save more than $7 million in transaction fees in 2024, and increase the transaction confirmation success rate to 99.9%.

• Cross-chain protocol : Cosmos IBC and Polkadot XCMP allow assets to flow across chains, and users can choose the chain with the lowest Gas fee for transactions. The cross-chain gateway of HashKey Exchange supports the aggregation of 8 public chain assets, and the amount of cross-chain transactions processed will increase by 300% in 2024, and the transaction fee will be reduced by 70%.
• Layer 2 solution : Arbitrum and Optimism compress transaction data and submit it in bulk to the Ethereum main chain, reducing Gas fees by more than 90%. After a certain DeFi protocol migrated to Arbitrum, the user's single Swap fee decreased from $1.2 to $0.1, and the transaction volume increased by 5 times.

Developers reduce Gas consumption through code optimization. For example, changing frequently called functions to View functions to avoid state changes, or using bitwise operations instead of complex logic. HashKey Exchange's smart contract audit tool detected and fixed more than 1200 high Gas consumption vulnerabilities in 2024, helping project parties reduce contract deployment costs by an average of 40%.